Head Start cuts will devastate kids

Angela Williams returned to Worcester from Florida last year to live in an apartment with her sick mother. When the woman died in December, Angela and her two kids found themselves homeless.

"We ended up sleeping in my car," she remembered. "Sometimes we slept on the floor at a friend's house. It was awful. I told my little one we were camping. There were times I stayed awake all night, just so scared."

After months of searching for work, in April she was offered a full-time job as a medical assistant for an area cancer center. Delighted, she set about finding care for her 4-year-old daughter. Private day care was too expensive, and she didn't qualify for vouchers.

Finally, a friend suggested she contact Head Start. Within days her daughter was placed in a class at Vernon Hill School, and Ms. Williams started work the next day.

"Head Start meant everything to me," said Ms. Williams, 35. "It turned my life around. It meant food on the table and a roof over our heads."

In Massachusetts last year, 16,000 kids were served by the federal preschool program designed to give 3- and 4-year-old children from low-income families a jump-start in their education. Along with Early Head Start, which serves pregnant women, infants and toddlers, the programs are aimed at addressing the social and academic ills caused by poverty.

But Head Start is just one of the many programs slated to suffer as a result of sequestration, the massive spending cuts plan so dire that it was intended to be a last resort and to force lawmakers to reach a compromise on reducing the nation's deficit.

The compromise never happened, and $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts are due to go into effect over the next 10 years. And while cutting government spending is a laudable goal, these cuts are broad and implemented across the board, with no input from agencies and departments.

Head Start, for example, will lose 2,000 slots this year in Massachusetts, according to U.S. Rep. James McGovern. Launched in 1964, Head Start is the nation's largest preschool program, serving an estimated 904,000 low-income children.

"I've lost count of how many people have come to see me throughout my district about this issue," McGovern said last week, in a telephone interview from Colombia. "It breaks your heart, especially when you see single mothers working two and three jobs. Head Start has been a godsend to them."

McGovern might have been speaking of Williams, who now works two jobs and was one of the single moms who appealed to the congressman for help in restoring funding for Head Start. She found a sympathetic ear in the liberal legislator, who called the cuts "shortsighted" and damaging.

"These across-the-board cuts represent an all-time high in recklessness and stupidity," he said. "If you want to make cuts, make them where there's waste and duplicity. But don't cut programs that help kids, especially low-income kids. Head Start has proven to be effective and much needed. If we want these kids to have a productive future, we have to invest in them early."

Angela Williams and her two kids now live in a third-floor apartment off Greenwood Street. Her 4-year-old learned her ABCs in Head Start and has "blossomed" after attending the preschool program, she said. And while she still struggles to make ends meet, the mother who was homeless just four months ago credits much of her comeback to the program slated for massive cuts.

"I didn't have anyone to help me," she said. "Head Start was like a miracle. I agree that there should be cuts in government spending. But they shouldn't affect low-income and poor children,"